I don’t really remember where I first heard about The Ribman, aka Mark Gervaux. I imagine it must have been not long after moving to London in 2011, as I remember making the trip from my flat in Camberwell to his stall at Brick Lane’s Sunday market. Whenever it was, and however I came to hear about him, I’m glad I did.

What I didn’t know at that time were the layers to his craft. As far as I was concerned, I was off to go and get some really tasty meat, eat it, and that was basically it. That’s how it is with most places. And let’s get one thing clear – the meat he makes is fantastic. I don’t know if it’s a phenomenon that has a name, but when I eat a really good meat dish, there’s this tingly mouth sensation I get, this explosion of the senses, it goes far beyond just tasting nice, it seems to emanate from the very roots of my teeth, from my cheeks, the roof of my mouth, saliva glands going into overdrive. This is a party with no door policy, everyone in that gob is invited, and they all want to get down. This is the sensation I get from The Ribman’s rib meat.

The Ribman’s Rib Roll

The main thing he serves is pretty straightforward – a rib roll. A big white bun stuffed full of pork rib meat, pulled from the bones and smothered in whatever sauce you prefer – either BBQ, or his own Holy Fuck sauce. More on the hot sauces later… It’s unfussy, unpretentious, and pretty much impossible to eat as a sandwich! I could try to describe how he makes his rib meat, but all I’d be doing is paraphrasing this video, so here you go. The standard goes for £6, or if you want to go all-in, you can get an absolute monster for £10.

Those of you who watched the video will have seen him making his hot sauces. I’ve said enough about the rib-roll, and these sauces deserve their own time. His signature sauce (the brilliantly name Holy Fuck) is just a magnificent example of how to do it. For starters, it is devilishly hot. Those who are not acclimatised to properly spicy condiments will struggle to get past this heat. Those who are, they are in for a treat. Holy Fuck is one of the best hot sauces I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling, a wonderfully fruity complexity that you have to treat with the respect naga jolokia and scotch bonnet chillies deserve. Go over the top and you will be coughing and spluttering, get it right and you have an evolving experience in your mouth that takes you through to a warming, satisfying finish that stays with you long after you’ve finished eating, waves of chilli hitting you as your mouth discovers little pockets of chilli that have hidden away!

As well as this signature (which he once did as a frankly sensational bacon Holy Fuck, apparently sadly never to be repeated), he also makes the even hotter, and even more brilliantly named Christ on a Bike and Holy Mother of God, as well as an excellent Japanese influenced variant, Fuck Yuzu (which I think is probably my overall favourite). Christ on a Bike has 3 times the naga chillies as Holy Fuck, and Holy Mother of God is hotter still, so be warned – they will blow your head off! Many of London’s burger joints have taken notice – Ribman specials have been spotted in the wild at numerous outlets, either featuring his sauces or meat. The Honest Burger Ribman Special was fantastic in particular, but in truth there are few dishes that aren’t improved with a dash of Holy Fuck – it utterly transformed a Chicken Parma Burger at MeatMission, and I’d love to see someone do something with Mac & Cheese and his sauces… Maybe deep fried balls of Mac & Cheese with a blob of Holy Fuck in the middle? Come on people, lets make this happen!

The now traditional stocking-up-before-heading-to-see-my-family-oop-north order

Less celebrated than his sauces are his rib rubs. I’ve never actually used these for the prescribed purpose, although I hope to give it a whirl this summer. However, I have found a handful of uses for them, and tbh I could happily use it as a substitute for salt & pepper. A personal favourite is to cut sweet potato into wedges, lightly oil them, sprinkle liberally with the Holy Fuck rib rub, and then roast. They are fantastic served hot, even better when reheated a day or two later as they take on an extra crunch, and work brilliantly cold in salads and packed lunches. I also almost always chuck a nice big pinch in with a bowl of mixed nuts and seeds for giving a healthy snack some fire! I’ve not tried the standard rub, just the Holy Fuck one – I find the rubs a gentler heat than the sauces, with some more sweetness in there. The chilli seems to glow from your tongue, and isn’t as prone to hitting the back of your throat with a sledgehammer if you overdo it!

Speaking of hammers, as you might have noticed from the logo, Gervaux is a committed West Ham fan, and seems to be loving life in the Bilic/Payet era! He can be found knocking out his rib rolls at The Boleyn Tavern on match days, although I assume he’ll be heading elsewhere with the move to the Olympic Stadium that is on the way next season. He’s also a very engaging and entertaining Twitter user, and commendably forthright about the liberties some street market companies take with their traders – it’s good to have someone as prominent and respected as him holding the less fair operators to account given the explosion in popularity of street markets across London in recent years.

As you can tell, I’m a big fan, and I’m happy to offer my whole-hearted recommendation for what The Ribman is selling!

Bit of self-promotion I guess, but hey, this is all free, so I hope you don’t mind! Last Monday saw the release of my new 808 Bang EP on Lupe Fuentes‘ imprint In The Loop Recordings. It had a great reaction on promo, with the likes of Doorly (“808 Bang is wicked!”), Mark Knight (“Big!”) and Gorgon City (“Sick one!”) being fans.

This promo mix is a selection of my current faves and some older personal classics that I felt fitted the feeling I was going for – Paranoid and It’s So were real staples for me back in around 2008/09ish.

The EP is selling well, with the title track sitting at #25 in the Traxsource Tech House chart at time of writing – if you feel like buying a copy to help the surge towards the top 10, that would be just fantastic 😉 If not, no hard feelings!

I became aware of Ben Gomori, I believe, through his hosting of the Data Transmission podcasts. Via a brief spell with Eastern Electrics, he’s ended up quite a long way down the path of creating his own essential corner of underground dance music, with his excellent Turned On podcast.

This mix is one of his occasional live recordings that he shares from his DJing schedule, from Farbfernseher in Berlin. Funnily enough he was playing alongside an old friend of mine from the days when I used to play regularly at Stealth in Nottingham, Ben Start, small world innit?

It’s a cracking deep house mix (in the proper sense of the term, not the top 40 Now That’s What I Call Derp House that rules daytime radio), and full of tracks that I have since sourced and purchased – I think I broke my personal record for shazaming tracks, clocked in at 9 by the end of this! Enjoy.

I moved to London nearly 5 years ago, in the summer of 2011, just before the riots (a coincidence, I assure you). At that point, the “gourmet burger” scene, for want of a better term, was just kicking off in earnest. The Meat Wagon had scored a site they called Meat Liquor, Honest Burgers was making waves from its first outlet in Brixton market (despite not having toilet facilities onsite, which caught me out the first time I went…) and queues for all the major players were plentiful and long.

Fast forward to now, and they are everywhere, with all manner of new kids on the block, corporate chains upping their game to try and get a piece of the action, major names from the USA coming over and proving to be all hype, no substance (Shake Shack and Five Guys really are both the epitome of mediocre, overpriced fast food from the times I’ve been, and I was stunned at the poor service in Shake Shack, given how great service invariably is in America), and the early pioneers are on the whole to be found all across the capital, and in some cases the world (Meat Liquor now has sites in Leeds, Brighton, Bristol and even Singapore).

It’s incredibly competitive, and many have a decent claim to being the leader of the pack. However, for me there is a clear front-runner – Patty & Bun.

Obviously when picking a favourite, you’re looking for something that can scale the heights. But almost as important, is that it gets up to the top of the mountain each time, rather than wheezing about halfway up and deciding it can’t be bothered.

The only place I’ve been to that can claim that same sort of consistency in excellence as Patty & Bun is Meat Mission. At a rough estimate, I’d say I’ve eaten at Patty & Bun 10 times now (3 in Mayfair, half a dozen or so at Liverpool Street, and this trip to Soho). Every time it has been exceptional.

Merch? At a burger joint? What is the world coming to eh?Cocktail people love puns.Oh Lawdy

If anyone asks me the best burger in London, I have no hesitation in proffering the Jose Jose. It’s a messy beast, but worth the kerfuffle. The Sobrasada and Chorizo Relish is one of the greatest condiments I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling, sweet, tangy, a little spicy kick, with tiny, crunchy nuggets of fried chorizo in most mouthfuls. I’ve had better (the Super Fatty Patty and the World Peace Burger), but they were one-month-only limited editions. My intention last night had been to treat myself to another one of these masterpieces, until I saw the casting call for their special, the Beefer Sutherland. The price tag was a little steep, at nearly 50% more than my old faithful, but I’m a sucker for a novelty burger, so in the order went.

Before the food, a word about the venue and service – there was no queue, which surprised me a little, even at 8.45pm on a Wednesday. I had only become aware that this P&B existed days earlier, that had somehow escaped my radar, but it seems to have been there for quite a while. The friendly waiter showed us to a table downstairs, the restaurant decked out in the pretty-standard-now “reclaimed wood and nick-nacks” style, and with plenty of nods to the history of Soho in the shape of neon lights alluding to sexy-time, and pin-up girl pictures adorning the walls. The bathroom was more than a little cosy, I popped in to wash my hands before the meal, and had to give the hand-dryer a miss as it would have probably sent the man at the urinal’s flow into the stratosphere. Not sure if this design choice is also a nod to Soho tradition. Oh, and major props on the music – on walking in they had Fallacy ft Tubby T – Big & Bashy playing (a track I must have played dozens if not hundreds of times in my hip hop sets back in the early 00s), and it was solid hip-hop and grime early on, switching to some very nice (proper) deep house later on. I shazamed a good 4 or 5 songs for future reference!

Live sexy nudes. I saw none. I feel cheated.

The food arrived swiftly after ordering (worth noting you can specifiy how you prefer the beef patty cooked here, which is not always the case at burger joints), and without anything as boring and traditional as a plate. Personally, that didn’t bother me but one of my companions found that rather irritating, and I know many have a bee in their bonnet about this trend. The burgers come wrapped in waxed paper, which you can unfold to use as something of a bowl/plate substitute – the burgers are so juicy and the toppings so plentiful that you absolutely need this!

The aftermath – delicious gravy to dip the potatoes in!

As well as our burgers, we order rosemary fries, confit potatoes with salt & vinegar aioli and Patty & Bun’s famous “Winger Winger Chicken Dinner” wings.

Pre-munch.Post-munch.

The burger was, on first bite, a bit of a shock to the system. It wasn’t an unpleasant shock, but it had a very unusual flavour that I wasn’t expecting, a large part of which I think came from the pickled shiitake mushrooms. I remember seeing a Heston Blumenthal show where he went on at length about the relationship mushrooms and beef have, and how mushroom can really maximise the “beefiness” of a burger or steak. And you know what, I think he was right. There was a deeply pleasurable rich-but-savoury party kicking off in my house, and much like a flatmate who is woken by it then decides to join in because it’s there whether they like it or not, my tastebuds spent the first half trying to work out what was going on, and the 2nd half having a whale of a time. The lettuce seemed somewhat redundant, but everything else added something useful to the experience – little chunks of beef from the ragu varied the texture of the meat, the beef fat mayo was unlike any mayonaisse I have had before, while the roast onion ketchup provided a little sweetness to counteract the overall picture, that was very much in the realms of umami. The brioche bun, despite all the juices, held up brilliantly to the very last. There was a touch of Dip n Flip to the experience actually, although I would have to say that I preferred the Dip n Flip version of this type of burger, and it’s considerably cheaper. And in truth, this was not a patch on the Jose Jose, which is £3.50 cheaper.

Sticky, messy wings.

Beautifully cooked so it just fell away from the bone with no effort at all, and very meaty.

These confit potatoes were awesome.

Really crispy, fluffy on the inside – would have liked a touch more rosemary seasoning though.

As I mentioned earlier, the wings are famous, and for good reason. I was never a big fan of chicken wings until an old flatmate (how’s it going Harry?) started raving about Meat Liquor’s Bingo Wings, and while it was those which converted me, these are a completely different beast. They are cooked in an 18 hour confit process, and are reassuringly meaty, this meat breadcrumbed and coated in a fairly sweet, and very sticky, BBQ sauce, and simply falling off the bone the moment your mouth gets round them. There’s a hint of honey and ginger in the sauce, it’s possibly a little sickly for some palates, and a whole tub of them to yourself (which is about 6 I think) might have been too much for me, but 3 or 4 hit the spot just right. You will need the hand wipes they give you if you order these.

The rosemary fries do what rosemary fries do – these are a solid example, crispy outside, fluffy inside, I’d have preferred a touch more seasoning, but they weren’t my order, so I’m not complaining.

The confit potatoes, however, were fantastic. Basically they were tiny, brilliant roast potatoes with an excellent aoili, though I ended up dipping them in the juices that had abandoned the burger ship. I could happily be served a bucket of these potatoes, a bowl of this gravy, and just get stuck in. Incredibly crispy, and so fluffy inside – I’m not an expert, but I suspect goose fat or beef dripping or something was used on these to get this result.

The beer was served in some sort of outsized milk bottle, which I inexplicably found really pleasant to marvel at. Maybe it was just the beer inside, I’ve not had a drink in 12 days and was on the water for this excursion.

All in all, I was yet again delighted with Patty & Bun, and relieved that I hadn’t bigged it up to my friends only to see them disappointed (this has happened at Honest a few times since they expanded so rapidly, even though when they are on point they are one of the best). The Beefer Sutherland was not something I’d order again given the other available options, particularly at that price point, but was a thoroughly enjoyable burger in it’s own right. The sides were superb, especially those wings. I know I’ll be back again, and again, and again…